Jamie Minnich spent six years sleeping fitfully, listening for movement as her son slept.

She spent six years making sure he texted her when he went out, when he came home, and times in between.

She spent six years waiting for a call she didn’t want to answer.

That call came Jan. 14, when a California doctor told her Logan, her 23-year-old son, was dead.

“You are either waiting for phone calls from the police, you are waiting for phone calls from the hospital, friends,” Jamie said. “I made him text me nonstop. If he slept for too long, I’d be checking on him.”

Jamie was afraid her son would go to sleep and not wake up. That the heroin his brain said his body needed would shut him down for good.

It’s exactly what happened.

Logan’s six-year battle with drugs came to an end less than a month after he checked into Pacific Palms, a recovery house in Oceanside, California.

Living in Los Angeles was Logan’s dream. His first time on an airplane was the Dec. 15 trip from St. Joseph Institute for Addiction near State College, Pennsylvania, to Pacific Palms.

Jamie saw her son for the last time on Dec. 13, when she spent about 90 minutes with Logan and his counselor as they prepared for his journey. She took him the electronics he couldn’t have in rehab, but could use in recovery, and traded his winter clothes for some better suited to southern California.

“He seemed good when he left,” Jamie said. “He had a layover in Phoenix, and I talked to him. He was good the first two weeks in California. I could tell from his Facebook stuff and messages on his iPad.

“Something happened in that last week or so.”

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This is the most recent picture of Logan Minnich. He had just moved to California, and began living in a recovery house. According to his mother, he was doing well, February 14, 2019.(Photo: Cameron Clark, York Daily Record)

Jamie might not ever know why things changed for Logan, but she is trying to find out. She has hired a private investigator to look into his password-protected laptop and phone. She is hoping for a phone number or name of the person who provided the drugs that Logan took. That information could lead to a criminal investigation.

Until then, Jamie is telling Logan’s story in the hopes that it can keep another family from traveling the road she and her late husband, Tim, had to travel.

York County coroner Pam Gay is familiar with the end of that road. After seeing a spike in drug-related deaths in 2017, there were fewer in 2018. Gay sees that as a positive.

“We jump at every silver lining we can find,” Gay said. “It could totally be a fluke, it could be different next year.”

She believes the use of Narcan, and the fact that it’s more readily available, is a big reason for the slight decline in heroin deaths in 2018, even though the overdose reversal drug has been in use in York County since 2015.

Hidden secret

Jamie Minnich learned about her son’s drug use six years ago, during his junior year at Spring Grove Area High School. She came home to find a step stool in the middle of her bathroom floor. There was no logical reason for the stool’s location. At least not until she climbed it and started to poke around the ceiling tiles.

“I had a drop ceiling, I hit it and heard things fall,” she said. “I took it away and there was drug paraphernalia. Bags of pot. Nothing worse than that.”

After talking to her son, she bagged her findings and threw them away.

But it didn’t end there. Attendance became an issue in Logan’s senior year of high school. By then he was driving himself to school - at least that’s what his parents thought.

“We both left for work before Logan,” Jamie said. “So, if he didn’t go [to school] I didn’t know. If he wasn’t there, if he left, I didn’t know.”

Jamie and Tim noticed things were missing from around the house, from Tim’s work truck.

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A picture of (left to right) Logan, Jamie and Tim Minnich sits on the desk in Logan's room, February 14, 2019.(Photo: Cameron Clark, York Daily Record)

A month before Logan graduated from Spring Grove in 2013, Jamie was called to the high school. The police received a tip from Crimestoppers that Logan was dealing drugs from his car. They needed a parent to be present because he was 17.

The police searched his car and his locker. Logan was strip searched and warned that he would be watched. A short time later, Logan turned 18 and graduated from high school.

By the end of the year, Logan went from attending classes regularly at Penn State York to sitting in Central Booking for DUI with drugs in his system and possession of Molly.

In four months’ time, Logan got three DUIs – all for drugs – and lost his driver’s license for 14 years. He was put on house arrest and wore an ankle bracelet. His curfew was 10 p.m. because he was working.

He found ways to drive. In April 2015, he totaled a car and told police he didn’t want his parents to bail him out. Logan went to jail.

“We combined all of the DUIs, all of the charges in between and took a plea agreement for Logan to stay in jail for six months,” Jamie said. “I was OK with him going to jail. It was the felony I worried about because you have that forever.”

Logan got out of York County Prison in October 2014, and his mother said things went downhill from there.

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Jamie Minnich has pictures of Logan and her late husband, Tim, throughout her house, February 14, 2019.(Photo: Cameron Clark, York Daily Record)

Seeing dollar signs

Logan’s parents didn’t know about the money he owed to drug dealers or the threats he received to make him pay. Jamie received his iPad after he died and learned his car windows were broken by the same drug dealers who told him he had seven targets on his back.

She read text messages warning Logan that people would come after him and his family to get their money.

“Logan’s only 19, and he’s trying to come up with money,” Jamie said. “Don’t get me wrong, he’s responsible for all of this. He made these choices, but this is how it spirals out of control.”

Jamie doesn’t know how much her son owed, but she knows the dealers wanted $300 to keep his family safe. This was just the beginning.

He totaled five cars, but never hurt anyone. The last car belonged to his mother. He took it in December 2017 while she slept and was back home playing video games when she discovered it was gone. Logan didn’t admit to the crash until he learned she could be held accountable if police thought she was covering for her son.

Logan wanted to return to college. He wanted to try and make something of himself even though he had a felony hanging over him and the knowledge that he couldn’t drive until he was in his early 30s.

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Jamie Minnich (left) did everything she could to help Logan (right) beat his addiction. She encouraged him to seek help and was by his side every step of the way, February 14, 2019.(Photo: Cameron Clark, York Daily Record)

The family learned it’s hard to find a four-year college that will accept someone with a felony.

“IUP agreed,” Jamie said. “That’s where I graduated from.”

But a month before Logan was to leave for school, Tim was diagnosed with cancer on top of the congestive heart failure they already knew about. He was given three to six months to live.

“I told [Logan] he needed to go,” Jamie said. “And, actually, I wanted him to go. I thought it’s best Logan go away and I told him anytime he wanted to come home, we’ll get him home.”

So Logan left. He went to class and he blew through his student loan money to the tune of $27,000 in less than three semesters. He took out credit cards and maxed them with cash advances.

Tim Minnich died in March 2016, at the end of Logan’s spring break. In October, Logan was caught shoplifting an $8 item in Indiana, Pa., and after spending three days there in jail, was sent to Central Booking in York on an outstanding warrant.

Jamie Minnich (left) did everything she could to help Logan (right) beat his addiction. She encouraged him to seek help and was by his side every step of the way, February 14, 2019. Cameron Clark, York Daily Record

This is the most recent picture of Logan Minnich. He had just moved to California, and began living in a recovery house. According to his mother, he was doing well, February 14, 2019. Cameron Clark, York Daily Record

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Logan hit rock bottom in July 2018 after 18 months of struggling to find a job with a felony record and no driver’s license on top of student loan and credit card debt.

“July 11, it was 90 degrees and he was wearing sweats,” Jamie said. “This is how addicts dress. They are cold all of the time through addiction. If they’re not high, they’re suffering from chills.”

A week later he started outpatient rehab. He rode his bike or walked there two or three times a week to try and kick the heroin addiction.

After her husband’s death, Jamie sold their house with an acre of land in the Spring Grove School District. She moved with Logan to a two-bedroom apartment in Hanover that was close enough to the outpatient rehab facility, stores, restaurants and their jobs that Logan could walk or ride his bike.

She was trying to give her son an element of independence and pull him out of the depression that heroin had sunk him into. Logan relapsed three weeks into outpatient rehab, but returned to the program a week later.

Jamie said it was a constant struggle for her son. He was frequently sick and would sleep in the hall of their apartment building so he wouldn’t wake her up when he got home from working third shift.

By September, Logan had given up on outpatient rehab and was looking for something residential.

“I don’t know how he picked St. Joe’s,” Jamie said of the rehab facility near State College. “He did all of the leg work, made all of the phone calls. He said I found a place that’s going to take me, they are going to pick me up tomorrow.”

When he was near the end of his 30-day treatment, Logan called his mom and asked if she would pay for two more weeks (insurance paid for the first 30 days). He didn’t feel like he was ready to leave.

“They get scared to come back into society,” Jamie said. “They feel very protected and in a bubble when they are in rehab.

“He’s five miles out in the woods, there are no drug dealers trying to get ahold of him. The place is gated and locked, they can’t get in.”

After six weeks in rehab, Logan transferred to a recovery house in the City of York. Within three weeks he relapsed in the house and was immediately kicked out. He got into a fight during his days on the street and went to jail, but didn’t call his mom until he made the decision to return to St. Joe’s.

“He called me and said, ‘St. Joseph’s is coming to get me, I had a bad day today,’” Jamie said. “Later I found out through a message that he had been using Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, took off Monday and relapsed Tuesday and called St. Joe’s. I’m surprised, honestly, that he made it through that.”

One last slide

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Logan Minnich played lacrosse and other sports at Spring Grove high school before graduating in 2013.(Photo: Cameron Clark, York Daily Record)

Logan knew heroin addicts don’t get many recovery attempts. So, when he made it through a second stint at St. Joseph’s and was looking for a recovery house, his counselors didn’t want him to come back to York.

He knew too many people in York. He relapsed a month earlier when he came to York. They wanted a fresh start for Logan, who had dreams of southern California.

That’s where he went. He left Dec. 15 to live in a million-dollar house a block from the beach in Oceanside. The first few weeks were positive as he continued with his counseling and got settled.

By the second weekend of January, everything had changed.

“It’s hard when you are 3,000 miles away,” Jamie said. “Days before [the overdose] he had deleted Facebook, he sent a group message to about 12 people. He told the people at St. Joe’s that if he relapsed again he was just going to make himself disappear.”

The first phone call came just after Jamie got to work at RH Sheppard Wabco in Hanover at 6 a.m. on Jan. 14. It was a California phone number and she knew the news wasn’t going to be good. The Pacific Palms house manager said Logan had overdosed and was on his way to the hospital. They had given him two doses of Narcan.

“They didn’t tell me that he didn’t respond to the Narcan,” she said. “I figured at that point, they were taking him as a precautionary measure to the hospital because sometimes they have respiratory problems. They sent me the information about what hospital he was at, and that was it.”

She told her boss and coworkers about the call and that she wasn’t sure what was going on. And she went back to work.

An hour later, a doctor called from St. Joseph’s Missionary Hospital and told her about the breathing tube and the pulmonary people who tried to get Logan’s heart beating.

Jamie asked if it was beating now. The doctor replied, “No, Logan didn’t make it.”

“And I said, ‘did he die?’ And he said, ‘yes,’” Jamie remembered from her Hanover apartment. “He said, ‘we’re sorry, but we just wanted to let you know that everybody tried, but we just couldn’t get his heart to beat again.’”

Logan took his last ride on an airplane just over a month after he took his first. This time he was coming home.

Hindsight is 20/20

Jamie has had plenty of time to look back and rethink how she and her late husband handled things. Would they do things differently if given the chance? Did she feel they enabled him?

The answer to both questions is no.

“I helped him get back on his feet for those six years,” she said. “I never got him out of any trouble. He served his time. We knew what was going on. I just couldn’t get him help because he didn’t want help.

“I had to wait for him to come dragging to me this summer and say, ‘I need your help, I’m done with this. I want out. I want to start a new life.’”

Logan Minnich was an athlete, he played baseball, soccer and lacrosse. He did well in school. He wanted to be an engineer.

He liked to hang out with his friends. And when those hangouts involved pot, his mother said, Logan joined. Somewhere on the journey, pot became Molly, which became heroin.

“They were just partying, it was fun,” Jamie said. “And then he got sucked in and things just spun out of control for him. When you mess with heroin, it messes with your brain. It becomes addictive almost right away.”

Jamie has done a lot of research in the last six years. She said it’s easier now with groups like Not One More than it was in the beginning. They educate and support, the exact things Jamie hopes to do in local schools.

She wants to walk into schools carrying the small wooden box that holds Logan’s ashes, the one she purchased with contributions from her coworkers. It sits on the TV stand in a corner of her living room.

“I would love to walk into Spring Grove with this and sit it there with me, and say, this is how you are going to go home to your parents if you even go down the heroin route.”